America Dips Toe in Burmese Waters – ISN
November 5th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=109232
The US goes to Burma in advance of President Barack Obama’s ASEAN summit next week, but major progress is not expected any time soon, Simon Roughneen comments for ISN Security Watch.
A high-level US delegation visited Burma on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, meeting with Prime Minister General Thein Sein and with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Significantly, US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell did not meet Burma’s ruling strongman Sen Gen Than Shwe, who really calls the shots.
The meetings are part of the new US engagement policy with the junta, softening the isolationist stance taken by the Bush and Clinton administrations, but retaining the targeted sanctions on the ruling generals and business cronies first implemented in 1997.
However, his trip was described as “exploratory,” and dissidents outside Burma remain skeptical, with reason. In the days before the meeting the junta rounded up journalists in Rangoon and arrested some aid workers involved in Cyclone Nargis relief. (more…)
As ASEAN dithers, the US circles – Asia Times
October 27th, 2009
http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KJ28Ae01.html
Out of shape? ASEAN street lantern, downtown Hua Hin. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
The rhetoric used at the latest summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations risks generating false expectations of the 10-member grouping developing into a nascent European Union. Certainly, progress was made on economic integration, but such issues as dealing with Myanmar remain unresolved, which sends a mixed message to the United States as it ponders its engagement in the region. - Simon Roughneen
HUA HIN, Thailand – While the bland regimen of inter-governmental summits does not usually spark juxtaposition with, say, Bob Dylan, there was a mocking appropriateness to the American singer’s The Times They Are A Changin’ ringing through the lobby at the Hua Hin Sheraton, one of the venues for 15th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit held over the past weekend.
Times might be changing across the 10-state regional bloc [1], but whether this means lofty goals, like implementing an ASEAN community by 2015, will be realized any time soon still seems unlikely. Outgoing ASEAN chair and Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, spoke of “realizing a people-centered ASEAN community”, but a good post-summit press sound bite does not easily translate into a viable policy platform.
Indeed, such grandiose language risks generating false expectations of making ASEAN appear more like a nascent European Union (EU)-style body than is the case. Walter Lohman, head of the Asia section of the Heritage Foundation, a US-based conservative think-tank said, “At best, ASEAN economic integration will mean a broad lowering of trade and investment barriers.”
However, even the wheels of that project are spinning in the political sands. With Thailand and the Philippines failing to cut a deal on rice trade over the weekend, a bilateral roadblock has been raised that will impede the goal of an ASEAN free-trade area by January 1, 2010. (more…)
New US policy has multiple goals – The Irrawaddy
October 5th, 2009
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16934
NEWS ANALYSIS – By SIMON ROUGHNEEN
Mere days after the US announced it would alter its Burma policy, the Burmese courts refused to release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. While her appeal was never likely to succeed, the timing of the denial arrives as a clear signal that change will not come quickly in Burma.
Not that anyone was expecting it. Addressing a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Burma in Washington last week, Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, acknowledged that “a long and difficult process” lay ahead. Tough US sanctions, Campbell said, will remain in place until the United States sees “concrete progress toward reform” in Burma, and he added that more sanctions could be imposed if changes are not forthcoming. (more…)
Robot Wars: The Hal Factor – ISN
September 25th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=106325
Rapid technological developments are changing how wars are fought, but as Predator drones and ground robots are supplemented by bigger, better and deadlier upgrades, moral and ethical implications will need to be assessed.
US drone (cc) Illetirres/flickr
Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.
Over the past decade, the use of unmanned aircraft and ground-based robots in combat has grown rapidly. The first drone kill was on an al-Qaida suspect in Yemen in 2002. The US military does not release precise figures, but since 2008, at least 40 people have been killed in dozens of UAV strikes in Pakistan, including Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is thought to have been behind the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, there were no unmanned systems in use on the ground.
However, according to PW Singer – author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century – by 2008 there were 12,000 of these in a variety of forms and carrying out different tasks, as part of the US deployment in Iraq.
Technological advances mean that an increasing share of the battlefield workload is being carried out by machines, a trend that looks set to grow exponentially. (more…)
Democracy in Burma being ‘damaged’ by US – Sunday Business Post
September 20th, 2009
http://www.sbpost.ie/news/world/democracy-in-burma-being-damaged-by-us-44452.html
By Simon Roughneen in Penang
Senior members of Burma’s National league for Democracy (NLD) – the party led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and which won the country’s last election in 1990 – have criticised US initiatives in Burma.
Following a visit to Burma (now known as Myanmar) last month, US Democrat Senator Jim Webb said it was his ‘‘impression’’ that Suu Kyi was open to new ideas about sanctions – a suggestion which her lawyer disputed. U Win Tin, a senior NLD figure who spent more than 20 years in jail in Burma, wrote in the Washington Post that Webb’s visit and subsequent pronouncements were ‘‘damaging to our democracy movement’’. (more…)
Chimerica: Consensus or Chimera? – World Politics Review
May 22nd, 2009
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3798
By Simon Roughneen and Diana Ionescu
Chimerica (Ibankcoin.com/cronkite)
At the London G-20 Summit in April, British prime minister and host Gordon Brown asserted that “The Washington Consensus is over.” With the struggling U.S. economy pulling much of the world down with it, the “Anglo-Saxon model” is now deemed flawed. Dirigiste tendencies are in, with U.S. President Barack Obama embracing a government-funded “stimulus” package whose numbers are well in excess of his high-spending predecessor.
Washington itself is moving away from the formula — consisting of fiscal discipline, market-set interest rates, competitive exchange rates, liberalisation of trade and investment regimes, deregulation and privatisation — to which it lent its name. The “Washington Consensus” was a term coined by economist John Williamson back in 1989 to name a would-be policy panacea for struggling Latin American economies. When implemented via international financial institutions, the “one size fits all” approach did not always work, with the Asian economic crisis in 1998-99 being the classic case in point. Moreover, given that it was not adhered to by the U.S., even under allegedly free-market-oriented Republican administrations, it is debatable whether it was ever really a consensus to begin with. (more…)
Indonesia: Obama’s New Buddy Keeps Bad Company – World Politics Review
March 26th, 2009
http://worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3510
Clinton visits USAID project in Jakarta (AP)
On her recent Asian tour, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made Jakarta a key stop. The move signaled a new direction for American foreign policy in the region following that of the Bush administration — which was accused by critics of having neglected Southeast Asia, and of having alienated Indonesians with its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While insiders and policy wonks might point out that the U.S. and Indonesia worked well together on counterterrorism issues during the Bush era — successfully undermining Jemaah Islamiyah, for instance — the perception lingers that Washington did not regard Indonesia, and Southeast Asia in general, as significant. That opened the way for China to forge intensified trade and diplomatic links in the region — both with its former enemies, such as Vietnam, as well as with strong U.S. allies, such as the Philippines, with whom China has unresolved territorial disputes.
Now, Obama’s apparent spring cleaning will see the United States deploy an ambassador to ASEAN, the regional organization comprising 10 Southeast Asian states. Clinton also deployed Obama’s trademark rhetoric on her stopover in Jakarta, saying that the United States will “reach out” to Indonesia as a potential ally and conduit into the wider Muslim world. (more…)
Obama wrestles the ox – ISN
January 19th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=95464
Amid economic flux, Obama faces challenges and opportunities across Asia, with the possibility of revolutionary change in China, but state failure in Pakistan.
Chinese year of the Ox (ISN)
By Simon Roughneen in Singapore for ISN Security Watch
Just days after Barack Obama assumes office in the US, 26 January will mark the Year of the Ox in Asia. As the global downturn pushes dozens of countries into recession, Asia, like much of the world, faces a deeply uncertain 2009.
When the subprime crisis morphed into full-scale Wall Street meltdown and pan-European banking panic during in the fall of 2008, longer-term predictions about a rebalancing of global geopolitics – with the rise in relative importance of India and China in particular, and Asia in general – were taken as imminent by some.
Longer-term, this rebalancing seems inevitable. However, Obama will have to contend with a rising Asia, managing relationships with an array of economies, as well as contribute to defusing security threats on the Indian subcontinent, in Afghanistan, and with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. (more…)
Obama’s Victory – ISN
November 6th, 2008
On the campaign trail, S.Carolina 26/1/08 (APPhoto)
It remains to be seen how an inexperienced public representative with an uncritically liberal voting record can become the reconciling planet healer (in a country and world marked by profound differences in political views) that he has promoted himself as. Even as he was elected, developments at home and abroad set the tone.
Liberal California voted against “gay marriage,” something Obama favors. Does this mean that the new president will have to curtail some of his liberal platform on the altar of political compromise, as doubtless he will seek re-election in four years? What, then, will become of the liberal machine from whence he built his powerbase, if the “Obamessiah” displays a yet-unproven nous for compromise? Or bouyed by a Democratic majority in the Houses, will Obama push the type of reworked European social-democratic policies that may, as per the California vote, run aground?
Abroad, Obama’s vacillating reaction to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August set alarm bells off across Eastern Europe, and was noted by a Moscow bouyed and bellicose on the back of high oil prices. Obama had no sooner taken a congratulatory call from Bush than the Kremlin announced it would deploy missiles in Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and the EU Baltic States, in response to a US missile shield for central Europe. Clearly the Kremlin believes the incoming president – reminiscent of JFK’s rough introduction to international relations at the hand of Nikita Krushchev – warrants a direct challenge. (more…)
New violence in Philippines sparks terrorism fears – The Washington Times
October 30th, 2008
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/30/new-violence-in-philippines-sparks-terrorism-fears/
Army troops in the Philippines (source AFP/Getty Images)
SINGAPORE | The southern Philippines, long considered a safe haven for al Qaeda affiliates, has relapsed into violence after a U.S.-backed peace deal between the government and a rebel Islamic militant group collapsed.
The renewal of the decades-old conflict has prompted fears that the Muslims of the island of Mindanao, the Bangsamoro or “Moros,” could align with extremists and the area could become a breeding ground for international terror groups.
“The religious and cultural affinities Moros share with the Islamic world could provide new entree for extremist elements willing to use violence in pursuit of their, if not wholly Moro, goals,” said former U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines G. Eugene Martin.
Since August, when the country’s Supreme Court rejected the peace deal as unconstitutional, attacks by rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – followed by counterattacks by the Philippine army – have displaced nearly half a million people and left dozens dead. Eight Moro insurgents and six soldiers have died in recent weeks.
The Malaysian-brokered peace agreement, called the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, was signed by the Philippine government and the MILF. (more…)
